Josh Mack blogging at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, and occasionally on; bicycles, politics, Brooklyn, parenting, crafts, and good reading. Currently helping to build a new NYC neighborhood news site - nearsay.com, that celebrates the voices that make our city. Subscribe to the daily newsletter it gives you what you need to know.

February 28, 2006

"...we're at an impasse today in the 2.0 space. The 2.0 crowd has the
right tools (communities, networks, attention markets, etc), but not
the right audiences. Big media still has the audiences, but not the
tools." quote from bubblegeneration. (via Susan Mernit)

As we stood pondering this sign, a herd of zambonis came rumbling through. We watched in awe as these ungainly, yet surprisingly elegant, animals made their way to their frozen watering hole leaving in their wake a glistening mirror-smooth finish in the snow.

China bans human/cartoon interaction. "Chinese regulatory authorities are notoriously
skittish regarding broadcast and film themes that include the supernatural or fantasy, including talking animals. "Babe" was banned on the basis that animals can't talk and some viewers would be confused." (via HuffingtonPost)

First cartoons now remixed London Tube maps with anagrammed station names are pulled down. Never fear mirroring is here. (via BoingBoing)

Acoording to this article Yahoo is banning names with allah in them like Callahan. "

Also in Britain it seem Yahoo! may be banning the use of allah in email names - even if the letters are included within another name. "This was uncovered by Reg reader Ed Callahan whose
mother Linda Callahan was trying to sign up for a Verizon email
address. She could not get it to accept her surname....Enquiries to Verizon revealed that a partnership with Yahoo! was to
blame. Yahoo! will not accept any identies which include the letters
"allah"....A spokesman for Yahoo! UK said: "This sounds like a glitch. But we will
get back to Ed and Lindy Callahan with a full answer as soon as
possible.""

Also on the subject of the Great British an Article about how Prince Charles regards himself as a political dissident. Also a very nice Che/Prince Charles graphic.

Lately, I've taken my eye off of Waterfront Media, a company that I used to follow with great interest. I learned today that the moment I stopped paying attention they went out and did two big deals one for the self-help titles of Harper Collins and another for two Meredith Magazines. I also see that my friends at RedJam Media (an aspiring Waterfront) have quietly launched Younger Next Year based on a Workman title of the same name.

Lastly, the fact that google has just lost a lawsuit about it's image search to a porn company is very interesting. The ability to search google images on a cell returns a thumbnail which is the same thing the "artistic photo" company sells to cell phone subscriber. It will be interesting to see what the ramifications are.

Okay back to channeling my cat's thoughts on her blog at catster. chicken, chicken, chicken, nap...chicken

I wonder if anyone will follow up with the number of nude curling calendars sold in the last week. Word spread in such a fast pace among people I know. This curling bug hits us all every four years yet it never leads to any real desire to actually curl. But think of the equipment you need, 40 pound stone, teflon soled shoes, brooms. It's an equipment freaks dream.

Noticed that several people I was talking to were all wearing t-shirts under their shirts and for a moment imagined that they were all wearing t-shirt dickies. I remember having a yellow turtleneck dickie in 5th grade. The t-shirt dickie could give you the look without the bulk of course you would walk around all day very self-conscious that you were wearing a dickie.

February 15, 2006

dogster and catster - wow! my cat is going to be joining this network. happily she as zero interest in hooking up with kittens. if, however, she could parlay her network into a job, that would be nice. fez on catster. joining the site and adding her info was easy. they have a very nice ui. i like how the forum changes color as you enter things.

update: fez has been up on catster for about 10 minutes. She is no longer anywhere near the most recent cats as there are about 20 before her. also i've just recieved three messages from potential cat friends who want her to join teir networks. it's an interesting thing as cats don't really have play dates with each other. the dog side must be even more hopping.

February 14, 2006

This is the first year in quite a while that I haven't either watched or gone to the dog show at Madison Square Garden. It is a very good thing to do on Valentine's day. I think of myself more as an Otter Hound but the photo wasn't as good.

Another NY tradition has also come to an end. Eisenberg's coffee shop has started serving hamburgers. They had gone for the past 77 years without them but in the past few weeks gave in to burgermania. Today I kept to my plan of matzoh ball soup and a blt. In time I'm sure I'll try the burger but for now I don't think of them that way.

February 13, 2006

NY Magazine discovers blogs - they have a list of a top 50. Kudos for including foreign blogs, big demerits for not linking to the blogs. They also have a time-line They left off Romenesko who I would say was blogging when their timeline starts. I also had no idea that Peter Merholz gets credit for creating the term. Peter used to work with me at Voyager and he has gone on to great things at Adaptive Path but the inventor of the term?

"William Cella:
One of the industries that is not there yet, and is not considered
sexy, but will be in a few years is outdoors. When outdoor becomes
digitized, it is going to be awesome." Someone save us

February 07, 2006

Excellent post in PaidContent about how the issue of Telcos charging for pipes is being explained through different freaming techniques:

"A USA Today ... framing shifts the tone of the discussion; the telecoms are doing consumers a favor by adding more access charges. It leaves a different aura when the argument starts off based on the telecoms' desire to recoup investments. versus... Another article in today's Washington Post picks up on Verizon SVP John Thorne's comments at a lunch celebrating the 10th anniversary of the 1996 Telecommunications Act. It is time, he told the audience, to end Google's free lunch. "The network builders are spending a fortune constructing and maintaining the networks that Google intends to ride on with nothing but cheap servers. ... It is enjoying a free lunch that should, by any rational account, be the lunch of the facilities providers." That's the pragmatic frame, devoid of any artifice."

February 06, 2006

Government websites seem to be going around the blogosphere: TalkingPointsMemo has a great point about the fact that the OMB's new fact sheet seems to claim that the "Administration", not our armed forces or our allies, "Liberated nearly 50 million people in Iraq and Afghanistan;"

Also the FEMA site an old favorite of mine appears on Wonkette. What is the matter with their web staff. They are now using the icon of a kid running from a Tsunami as the icon about the head of FEMA. Is it an inside joke?

February 05, 2006

Today I was cleaning up my home office, opening some boxes that I've basically been dragging around for several years. They date from my work at Hearst and from HotResponse. Going through them, and disposing of most of their contents was a bit like going through a time capsule. I discovered many sales and media kits from companies like Clickability, Navisite, Exactis, B2B Works, (my favorite vestige of the past) CueCat, old Forrester reports about media, and even the original Amazon prospectus. I also discovered a worksheet forecasting the amount of money I thought I could make from the stock that I owned at HotResponse if we had achieved the "conservative" valuation we anticipated. It was very freeing to shred that but it was nice to see my reasons for some of the career moves I had made. I also found that I have kept multiple magazine site plans, marketing plans, business plans, and product development specs. Reading them over I can't believe I wrote some of them but it is nice to know that when I need to I can generate some pretty detailed and (I hope) impressive stuff. Most of it is in the trash now which will result in one less box needlessly cluttering the room but I am going to save some and also share some at work like chickclick.com to which my friends at Gurl.com once belonged.

February 03, 2006

Just bought this shirt from Mule Design. Have to get ready for their eventual takeover. (via coolhunting though I'm sad that my friend David didn't tell me about it, that would have been a better way of finding it. As it is most of our conversation today has consisted mostly of complaining about a common problem.)

February 02, 2006

The nation's largest telephone and cable companies are crafting an alarming set of strategies that would transform the free, open and nondiscriminatory Internet of today to a privately run and branded service that would charge a fee for virtually everything we do online.

So another 46 million dollars raised for:Introducing the Slingbox™ — a
groundbreaking piece of hardwired ingenuity that will literally
transform the way you watch television. The Slingbox enables you to
watch your TV programming from wherever you are by turning virtually
any Internet-connected PC into your personal TV. Whether you’re in
another room or in another country, you’ll always have access to your
television.

I don't want to have access from anywhere to my television. My computer - yes, my music - yes, but my television? I understand that the slingbox gets perhaps more interesting when not simply paired with a dumb device like my tv but when added to a Tivo or a DVR so in that case it makes a bit more sense, since to some people their "shows" are like my music or my "e-mail". But won't video be online and available from anywhere? Isn't ESPN streaming games as they happen, isn't iTunes selling shows? Help, what am I missing?

February 01, 2006

Updated account of Cindy Sheehan's arrest for wearing an anti-war t-shirt to the State of The Union Address.

Cindy Sheehan's account of what happened. No banner unfurled, just a shirt with a number.

PaidContent transcribes some rally interesting comments by the brilliant Esther Dyson on community, social media, and cell phones at the SIIA conference.

Satire is hard. I'm listening to WNYC and their State of the Union slam. Not so funny.

Article about the fact that auto publications have been made nearly obsolete by the Internet. Has music also made music publications obsolete? Possibly. So I guess the question is wheter these brands can leverage their names online. Can RollingStone compete with MySpace, independent music blogs, and livefm and Pandora, etc.?